Monday, November 21, 2005

Problems Google accessing Google in Germany

Today, from around 17:30 till 18:30 on the 21.11.2006 Google users in Germany had major problems accessing Google services. We got used to the fact that Google is always online. I am curious who's fault it was.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Google Analytics overloaded



Even the allmighty Google has proplems with its own success. Google Analytics experiences data update delays. The only excuse - It is an accquisition not home grown Google stuff.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Google Base


Yet another Google service - Googel Base!

It is basically a world-wide pinboard for your information. Information you want the world to know.
That can be recipes, research articles, ads to sell stuff, ads to buy stuff, you name it! The nice thing is that items can be tagged using xml-like attributes and the google maps integration.

This is one of these services which become the more useful/valuable the more people use it - So use it!

Google Print becomes Google Books Search



A few days ago I was using Google Print and things seemed a little changed - Only slightly. I must say I like the old layout much better. Especially because the search this book field was on the left side which I think it much more accessable. Then I recognized its name changed but it is still BETA of course.

People who looked at this service a little closer know that it is not straight forward to save the book pages Google Print displays. That is how they want to assure that the publishers do not get even more angry with Google. (Google faces serveral law suits because of Google Print.)

The book page is hidden under a transparent dummy image. And this is the one you will save if you can teach your browser to ignore the Google command to prohibit the right-click menu. The URL to the actual image of the scanned page is hidden in the CSS-file. The slector text is '.pgimg'.

It is not fun to extract the URL by hand due to the habit of Google to format their HTML ouput in very few very long lines. But with Java-Script it can be done at a click of a button.

I wanted to publish the Java-Script code as a link but ...
To bad that blogger.com does not support javascript in links - Or might this even be desired?
A little snipplet of code in you Toolbar and you can set the image free.

On the other hand, Google is big Google is mighty and you do not want to have them as an enemy. Furthermore, I like the service a lot and the more people abuse it the more likely it will become more restrictive.

Saving copyrighted material is against the law! Do not copy copyrighted material!

And buy the books you searched for using the google-provided links.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Mechanical Turk - Rivival


Amazon recently published its latest service. They call it Mechanical Turk and it may change the way programmers write programs, may finally boost webservices, and might be an excellent opportunity to earn good money for people in countries where wages/salaries are low.